Tag Archives: Statistics
Mathematics or “Citizen Statistics”?
Does learning mathematics help to master the statistics necessary to understand the social world we live in? Political scientist Andrew Hacker thinks this is a “math myth” that has led to requirements at the high school level that turns off … Continue reading
Fighting Extreme Poverty
Half a billion people live on less than 75 cents per day. Termed the “ultrapoor,” they often have too few resources to send their children to school or to save any money. What would it take to improve their conditions? … Continue reading
Measurement in Health Care and Education: Solution or Problem?
The desire to measure outcomes to monitor performance and improve health care and teaching is more than understandable: It would seem to go without saying for a research methodologist. But there can be too much of a good thing, as … Continue reading
Would You Want Your Parents to Know?
A new experiment at Harvard’s Student Social Support R&D Lab indicates that students in a summer program did better when their parents received a weekly one-sentence about their children’s performance. The study used a randomize experimental design with students in … Continue reading
Who We Are and Who We Are Becoming
As a long-term resident of the Boston area and a college professor, it’s heartening to learn that Bostonians spend more on college than residents of others cities. As I write yet another blog entry based on a newspaper article, it’s … Continue reading
Secret photographing of classes at Harvard??
Maybe you missed it, but it has been big news in the Boston area: classes were secretly photographed in spring 2014 as part of a Harvard University research project about classroom attendance. About 2,000 students in 10 lecture halls were … Continue reading
So much to do, So little time to do it
I often feel this way as I plan my research methods class and think about activities to assign. Of course, I’ve sort of created the problem in Investigating the Social World by including far more exercises and other activities for … Continue reading
Still Lying With Statistics?
Sixty years after the publication of Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic, How to Lie With Statistics, it might seem that no one could imagine getting away with any such skullduggery any more. But wait…there must be something causing the dramatic recent … Continue reading
Researching in a Social World 